Actor: Choi Min-sik

Choi Min-sik played Oh Dae-su in Oldboy, and the corridor fight, filmed in a single take across three days, is the most reproduced sequence in Korean cinema.

He ate four live octopuses for the film, performing a Buddhist apology before each take, which is a detail that has followed the film everywhere.

I Saw the Devil, Lucy and New World fill out the career, and he stepped away from film for several years in protest at the reduction of Korea’s screen quota system.